EchoLink Node 477654

Hello! 

It is a real pleasure to meet you!  Please call me Jim.  My wife Shelly “AB1CD" and I operate our station from a lab in the lower level of our home.  We call our lab the Technology Learning Center.  It is a combination classroom/ ham shack/electronics lab where we teach science and technology to kids of all ages, 8-80.  The lab has its own call sign and operates under the club call K1TLC.  Working with kids is especially rewarding and is one way we give back to the community.  Shelly and I are two thirds of a W5YI VE team and share a passion for helping others enter our hobby.  Amateur exams are administered by appointment at our home in Acworth, a suburb in NW Atlanta.  

A big challenge for us is operating our station from a deed restricted subdivision that doesn’t allow antenna towers; consequently, we must operate with a completely hidden antenna.  I am especially proud of our ability to efficiently work any HF frequency with a single end fed wire.  The station is purposely kept streamlined and well equipped to appeal to  a new, mostly younger, generation of hams. The station consists of a Flex 5000A software defined radio, Marshall MXL 2001 microphone, Motu Ultralite mk3 audio processor, Tokyo Hy-Power HL-2.5 Kfx solid state amplifier, Array Solutions PowerMaster meter, and home brew remote motorized transmatch. 

The Flex is a recent upgrade to our station and replaced an Icom 756 Pro.  We figured that computers may be more than a passing fad, so we decided to "take a walk on the wild side" and went with the Flex.  Wow!  The Panadapter screen on the Flex makes our shack look more like the bridge of the starship Enterprise clearly taking us boldly where no ham has gone before.  Oh boy! This is more fun than a bucket of knobs!

Our antenna is a 40 meter (130 ft.) inverted "L" supported by (2) 85 ft. pine trees.  It is end fed from the ground from buried coax.  The aerial portion of the antenna is split equally between the vertical and horizontal planes, 65 ft. vertical and 65 ft. horizontal.  We have about a dozen counterpoise wires of various lengths running in various directions and sometimes branching out to form multiple "Y's".  The secret to making all of this work is a remote controlled transmatch at the feed point.  The transmatch is an L network consisting of a .1-24 uh roller inductor and a 425 pf variable capacitor.  The capacitor and inductor are driven by a single DC motor from the shack.  The speed and direction of the pair are also adjustable.  The network provides a 1.2:1 or better match on any frequency from 10-160 meters. 

The tuner project was inspired by Peter Langenegger HB9PL who shared his clever idea in an article published in QST Dec. 2006.  The components I chose could easily handle 5 KW.  The junction box to the right side of the tuner provides a drip loop and protects the coax and control connectors from the weather.  It also houses a PolyPhaser lightning protector.  The red light on the cover of the junction box is an LED taillight.  The light flashes when the transmitter is keyed and serves as a warning that RF is present.  At night when we are "ON THE AIR", it looks as though a UFO has landed in the backyard.  Now that's what I call working DX!

The photo below is a "behind the scenes" view of the set up.  Located In the left cabinet is the Flex 5000A, the Dell computer that runs the Flex and the Motu mk3.  The cabinet to the right houses the 12 volt power supplies, Powermaster SWR box, gel cell batteries, and an AC inverter backup power unit.  The large vacuum tube you see is a lamp I made from some copper plumbing fittings and a tube scavenged from an old military transmitter.  It didn't seem right to run legal limit without a tube glowing somewhere. 

Below are a few photos of youngsters learning about amateur radio while operating K1TLC. 

To learn more about K1TLC and our efforts to teach science and technology to youngsters, please visit http://www.dingdong.com/giving_back.html .

73’s and God bless.

Jim & Shelly